Are you looking to find true love? Do you know that the one thing keeping you from experiencing true love is fear?
Lets look at a little inventory of common fears which keep us from experiencing true fullfilment.
Firstly, let me tell you that feeling your fear is healthy. As long as these feelings don't get stuck on repeat, causing you to become anxious, experiencing panic attacks. Fear in its healthy, FREE FLOWING state keeps us alert and on our toes. It comes, and if we allow it to exist without judgement (simply observing it without the need to change things) it leaves us without a residue. It makes us AWARE and READY, which is all that it is meant to do.
If you feel terrors, panic attacks or anxiety, this is because you are experiencing REPEATED attacks of fear. Those energies aren't allowed to flow freely, causing havoc by being trapped in your body, affecting your mood, sleeping patterns and behaviour in a very destructive way. I strongly advise you to seek professional help of an experienced therapist.
There are the fears we feel prior starting a relationship, the fears which keep us stuck in our current relationship, and the fears which arrive when our relationship has ended.
1. At the beginning of a new relationship, we fear we will get hurt by trusting someone we do not know.
Deeper under the surface of our consciousness the truth is different however. We don't fear others but OURSELVES. We don't trust ourselves enough to recognise the RED FLAGS, the deceit, the fraud, as we have been hurt multiple times in the past. And this is why: The more insecure we are, the more emotional trauma we have experienced as children, the higher the likelihood of us IDEALISING our partners, living an illusion in our minds rather than reality. The less we know ourselves, the less we know what drives us - why we react the way we do, not aware of our patterns of falling in love with similar types of people.
SOLUTION: Get to know yourself well by learning from your past mistakes, from your pain and failed relationships. Accept responsibility for the role YOU played in your relationships, which will in turn allow you to truly forgive and move on. It is also how you restore your trust in yourself - in your own ability to recognise what/who isn't good for you.
Have your relationships had a recurrent theme? If so you must stop dating and gain complete CLARITY into why are you engaging with similar types of men/women! Which parts of you are driving you into incompatible relationships?
2. At some point during our relationship, we fear that we will suffer because we won't recognise that the relationship doesn't serve us anymore.
We often suffer because our perception of what is 'normal' is set OFF KILTER by experiencing similar circumstances growing up. We can only stay in an abusive partnership which resembles a familiar one. We deem physical or/and emotional abuse loving - similar to how our parents treated each other and ourselves. We are therefore often emotionally immature (like our carers), unable to assert ourselves in healthy ways, incapable to communicate our needs and boundaries.
SOLUTION: Become present to the kind of relationship you had with your parents, and the relating your mum and dad displayed towards each other. Be honest about witnessing any signs of abuse - mental, physical, emotional. Critique and manipulation isn't love. Anger and resentment isn't happiness. Conflicts and drama isn't peace. Learn about boudaries and why yours may be non-existent.
3. The fear of our emotional pain is what keep us stuck in a relatioship long after its expiry date.
Feeling hurt is really our pain of rejection and abandonment. We are so scared of our unpleasant emotions because we do not know how to deal with them. Sadness, anger, disappointment, loneliness, frustration, the same emotions we found excruciatingly painful as children: we felt paralysed, powerless, alone...
When we finally decide to leave our partner, we do not understand why we feel so broken. We left because we felt suffocated by all the toxicity and abuse, which perfectly justifies our departure. Our heart is however still longing for love and contact from our abusers. This is becauase we have not yet understood how our childhood emotional wounding plays it's part in us feeling rejected and abandoned. Those strong emotional currents are so familiar yet scary because we do not understand them.
SOLUTION: Learn to name your emotions and work WITH them. Learn how to manage your thoughts and how these relate to your emotions. Re-focus on you instead of others and what they did to you. Out of self-love and self-respect learn what you truly need and desire so that YOU can start to heal. (For further reading on dealing with your painful emotions check out my next article.)
Oftentimes we move from one relationship to another before we respectfully ended the previous one. Before we allowed our emotions to heal us, before we have forgiven ourselves and learned ALL that there was to learn about us from our past mistakes. In time our insecurities and our baggage get bigger. In proportion to that also our pain, anger and fear, which is what we bring into our next relationship. Wanting to feel accepted we please our way into a new partnership, behind the mask of love hiding our fears...
Thank you for reading. If my article contributed to understanding yourself, please be generous and share it with others.
Copyright © 2016 Michaela Patel